Use one of the three calculations given to find the answers to the questions and reveal a rather good joke (if you like golf). these are popular with students and ideal for either using in class, online or as a homework in my experience. This could be used at KS3 or KS2 i think.

Impossible, the game show, involves asking questions and giving three possible answers: one correct, one that’s incorrect but could be correct in a different context, an impossible answer. There are twelve questions on various different topics and this is designed to encourage reasoning and discussion. Getting the answer correct is obviously important but the discussion as to why the impossible answer is correct and the other one not correct for the context might be more interesting. Topics include fraction calculations, place value, rounding, coordinates, angles and others and could be useful for Year 7.

This gives you a calculation at the centre of each of four “spiders”; students then have to use the central calculation to fill in the blanks using their knowledge of place value. Some blanks are answers are answers to a calculation, some are questions where they are given the answer. This is designed to avoid students getting in to a rut regarding these questions and make them think about their answers.

Solve the problems involving time and find the punchline to the fish-related joke. Useful as a classroom activity, online or as a homework.

Find the areas of some parallelograms, trapeziums, compound shapes and circles as well as working backwards to calculate a dimension to discover a really lame fish pun/joke (a generous description in this case). Ideal for class task, online task or a homework.

Use the graph showing 5 hours in the life of a shark to answer the questions and reveal a (pretty terrible) punchline to a joke. These work in class or online and essentially mark themselves as they spell out the answer so students can be reasonably independent with it.

Two jokes to find by multiplying matrices and finding multiples of matrices. This is designed for AQA Further Maths GCSE. These should not cause too many problems for students but might be a good opportunity to do some…

Perform the fish enlargements to generate the letters that form the punchline to a rather lame fish pun. These are all enlargements by scale factor 2 or 0.5 but there are no negative scale factors. There are some letters that aren’t used in an attempt to avoid students guessing the answer.

Perform the transformations of the fish to land on the letters and spell out the punchline to a dodgy fish-related joke. This involves reflection, rotation and translation and would bee ideal for a starter/plenary, main task in class or online or as a homework.

Two jokes to be discovered: one on surface area and one on volume. Students answer the questions and reveal a cheesy, fish-related pun. These are useful for starters, plenaries, main tasks or online lessons as the answer reveals itself meaning that students can just get on or check if nothing is being spelt out.

Four slides each containing four questions; the answer to each question is the same (and in the middle of the slide) but parts of the question are missing. Students need to find the missing values in the question so that they can get the answer stated. Some questions have single answers, others have multiple answers (I have tried to give algebraic answers where I can) and asking students to generalise answers could be an extension. These have proven popular in class and lead to good reasoning discussions.

Rearrange the formulae and reveal the joke (generous description in fairness). These formulae are not particularly tough to rearrange but should get across the principles of it; the subject only appears once in each case. Ideal for classroom activities (main task or starter/plenary) but I have used them for online lessons and homeworks as well.

Four screens of four questions involving indices where the final answer is given but parts of the questions are missing where students must fill in the blanks. Some have unique solutions/blanks and some have multiple or infinite solutions/blanks and this should lead to some great reasoning discussions and debates in class. These have been really successful in my classroom; hopefully they will be in yours as well.

Here’s another one; answer the questions and reveal a rather nice fish-related pun. This involves circumference and area of circles, including fractions of circles at the end. Ideal for classroom, online or homework activities.

Answer the questions, match to the letters and get a fish-related joke. These are useful in class, online or for homework; students seem to like them too despite the quality of the jokes…

Another fish joke, another set of maths questions to answer. This involves increase/decrease, finding the percentage change, reverse percentages and one repeated percentage change question. Ideal for both classroom and online tasks or a homework.

Three “spiders”: one on perimeter and two on area. Each slide contains six questions; four contain a diagram from which a formula needs to be derived and two contain a formula where students can draw their own diagram (this should lead to interesting discussions and thought processes).

This does what it says on the tin regarding domain and range. Answer the questions to find the punchline to what is a terrific joke, even if i do say so myself. Ideal for an online activity or in school/homework.

We had to come up with a “taster” lesson for Year 11s thinking about doing Maths or Further Maths A Level. We decided on this as it is something they will have heard of, isn’t on the Further or Additional Maths GCSE and relatively straightforward in its initial stages. There is a PowerPoint and a codebreaker.

Summing arithmetic sequences and various other things arithmetic sequence related. The usual answer questions then unjumble the letters to reveal a fish joke. Ideal for in class or at home.